Early Christianity

Such speculations (and later ones too, of course: differences of

opinion did not come to a halt with Constantine!) came to be

regarded as heresy when they fell foul of what the emerging

leadership of the church deemed to be true doctrine.

A catalogue of these heresies will show how they presented

versions of doctrine that reflect debate on the nature of Jesus’ sig-

nificance. One caveat is important, however. Our knowledge of

early Christian heresies depends almost wholly on the writings

of their self-appointed orthodox enemies. Among the extant

works of early Christian writers are those that modern scholars

term heresiologists, ‘writers on heresy’. (We also have heresiol-

ogy, which is the study of heresy, and the adjective heresiological.)

The most important of these in the period before Constantine

were Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, who wrote around AD

180, and Hippolytus, a presbyter of the church of Rome in the

early third century. Their works catalogued the errors of heretics

and refuted the doctrines they purveyed. Both Irenaeus and

Hippolytus regarded the wedding of Greek philosophical specu-

lation to the Christian message as a primary source of heretical

corruption. In this respect, they seem to have had in mind similar

intellectual trends to those that Origen described. Further infor-

mation on early heresies can be found in later authors, notably

Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, and the later fourth-century

heresiological catalogue known as the Panarion(literally, the

Medicine Chest– a cure for heresies!) by bishop Epiphanius of

Salamis on Cyprus. From these various sources we can discern

several trends in Christian thought that produced doctrines that

were condemned as heresy.

(1)Debates on knowledge and wisdom. Among the earli-

est groups to attract the wrath of the heresiologists

were those who claimed that they possessed special

knowledge (gno ̄ sisin Greek) about Jesus and God.

Indeed, Irenaeus’ heresiological treatise, which is

usually called Against Heresies(from the titles Adversus

HaeresesandContra Haeresesfound in manuscripts of

ORTHODOXY AND ORGANIZATION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

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